Using our guidelines with AI

#Introduction

Claude Code is Anthropic's official CLI tool that helps developers write better code by providing AI-powered assistance directly in your terminal. It can understand and apply coding standards, making it perfect for maintaining consistency across your Laravel projects.

We've created AI-optimized guidelines specifically formatted for Claude Code and similar agents to ensure it generates code that follows Spatie's Laravel & PHP standards.

Our AI-optimized guidelines cover:

• Core Laravel principles - Follow documented Laravel conventions first
• PHP standards - PSR compliance, type declarations, nullable syntax
• Class structure - Typed properties, constructor promotion, traits
• Control flow - Early returns, avoiding else statements, happy path patterns
• Laravel conventions - Routes, controllers, configuration, artisan commands
• Naming conventions - Complete reference for classes, methods, files, and URLs
• Code quality reminders - Essential principles for maintainable code

You can view the file with AI-optimized guidelines here.

#Global Integration using Claude Code

Add the guidelines to your global Claude Code configuration so they're available across all projects:

# Make sure the Claude configuration file exists
mkdir -p ~/.claude && touch ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md

# Download our guidelines
curl -o ~/.claude/laravel-php-guidelines.md https://spatie.be/laravel-php-ai-guidelines.md

# Tell Claude to read the guidelines file
echo -e '\n## Coding Standards\nWhen working with Laravel/PHP projects, first read the coding guidelines at @~/.claude/laravel-php-guidelines.md' >> ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md

#Project-Specific Integration using Claude Code

For individual Laravel projects, download the guidelines to your project root:

# Make sure the Claude configuration file exists
touch CLAUDE.md

# Download our guidelines
curl -o laravel-php-guidelines.md https://spatie.be/laravel-php-ai-guidelines.md

# Tell Claude to read the guidelines file
echo -e '\n## Coding Standards\nWhen working on this Laravel/PHP project, first read the coding guidelines at @laravel-php-guidelines.md' >> CLAUDE.md

Optionally, you can create a Composer script to keep guidelines updated:

{
    "scripts": {
        "update-guidelines": "curl -o docs/laravel-php-guidelines.md https://spatie.be/laravel-php-ai-guidelines.md"
    }
}

#AI docs for Spatie packages

The Context7 MCP project contains docs for various Spatie packages.